Saving Our Enemy and How We Had Planned Our Jewish State In The First Place Including The Arabs

 Nadene Goldfoot                                               

    IDF in Hamas tunnel where hostages could have been kept...the scale of some of the tunnels demonstrate significant planning and resources. In mid-December, the Israeli military uncovered what it called the biggest tunnel to date. The passageway, wide enough to drive a car through, emerged in a sand dune at the northern edge of the Gaza Strip, just 100 meters south of Israel’s Erez military checkpoint, which controls all pedestrian access from Israel into Gaza.                                                                 

                 Theodor Herzl in Basel, photographed during Fifth Zionist Congress in December 1901, by Ephraim Moses Lilien

When the IDF is fighting for Israel's life that has been threatened by Iran's octopus arms of Hamas in Gaza, shooting missiles, mortars, bombs of all sorts, as well as fires and drones, and then does something no other army has ever done to its enemy; warns their civilians and begs them to move away from the combat zone and why in order to preserve their life, and Israel is left without a friend in this whole world except the USA, I could just puke.  Israel has always put their civilian enemies first, and have done more than any other army in keeping them alive.  This time, however, our enemy, the terrorists of Hamas, have been using their people's lives to hide behind, not caring to let them be the fall-guy, and really die for them.  They hide their ammunition in schools, mosques, places no other sane people would do, and then dare Israel to come and get them. It's come to "doing it skillfully" or Israel as a nation and as a people will die.  Israel is now 77 years old after being in existence for about 3,000 years.  It seems puny, but worth the try.  Otherwise, we Jews no doubt would be facing another Holocaust as well as facing no Homeland.  

Israel has, from the very beginning, been planning on that prayed for day when they would have a chance to regain their homeland that they had lost so long ago;  Israel, that had been shrunk through time to be left with just their 12th tribe; last tribe, Judah, from which the Jewish people come from-with a little mixed-in neighboring tribesmen after 70 CE (AD) when the Romans had occupied, then brutally taken their land, and burned it down, Temple of Solomon and all. 

                                                Theodor Herzl, journalist-1860-1904, social dramatist.  He was a Paris correspondent for the Vienna Neue Freie Presse.                                

Theodor Herzl
תֵּאוֹדוֹר הֶרְצְל

  It was Theodore Herzl who had dreamed of a future day and had written a pamphlet about his ideas of a future Jewish state called THE JEWISH STATE.  

 He told  how they would handle it when they gained their land back.  Life had become unbearable for his people, constantly threatened by others of their lives with pogroms. They were barely 2nd class citizens to others, more like 3rd class with no rights whatsoever except by the head barons who wanted to use their knowledge, skills of writing and reading that didn't exist widely in these days.  Then they would be discarded like garbage, killed and spat upon.  

Theodor Herzl (born May 2, 1860, Budapest, Hungary, Austrian Empire [now in Hungary]—died July 3, 1904, Edlach, Austria) was the founder of the political form of Zionism, a movement to establish a Jewish homeland. His pamphlet ( Der Judenstaat) The Jewish State (1896) which was written in German. In German, it was titled Der Judenstaat, which translates to "The State of the Jews". It was published in February 1896. 

Herzl proposed that the Jewish question was a political question to be settled by a world council of nations. He organized a world congress of Zionists that met in Basel, Switzerland, in August 1897 and became the first president of the World Zionist Organization, established by the congress. Although Herzl died more than 40 years before the establishment of the State of Israel, he was an indefatigable organizer, propagandist, and diplomat who had much to do with making Zionism into a political movement of worldwide significance. It's ironic that the world has come to hate our word, "Zionist."  He had wonderful plans for his state that included the Arabs. 

 

Der Judenstaat (German, lit. 'The State of the Jews', commonly rendered as The Jewish State) is a pamphlet written by Theodor Herzl and published in February 1896 in Leipzig and Vienna by M. Breitenstein's Verlags-Buchhandlung. It is subtitled with "Versuch einer modernen Lösung der Judenfrage" ("Proposal of a modern solution for the Jewish question") and was originally called "Address to the Rothschilds", referring to the Rothschild family banking dynasty, as Herzl planned to deliver it as a speech to the Rothschild family. 

The book argues that after centuries of various restrictions, hostilities and frequent pogroms, the Jews of Europe had been reduced to living in ghettos. The higher class was forced to deal with angry mobs and so experienced a great deal of discomfort; the lower class lived in despair. Middle-class professionals were distrusted, and the statement "don't buy from Jews" caused much anxiety among Jewish people. It was reasonable to assume that the Jews would not be left in peace. Neither a change in the feelings of non-Jews nor a movement to merge into the surrounds of Europe offered much hope to the Jewish people:

"The Jewish question persists wherever Jews live in appreciable numbers. Wherever it does not exist, it is brought in together with Jewish immigrants. We are naturally drawn into those places where we are not persecuted, and our appearance there gives rise to persecution. This is the case, and will inevitably be so, everywhere, even in highly civilised countries—see, for instance, France—so long as the Jewish question is not solved on the political level."

               Edmond de Rothschild with High Commissioner Herbert Samuel, Palestine, 1920 (picture with Samuel-left- and Rothschild)

Baron Edmond de Rothschild rejected Herzl's plan, feeling that it threatened Jews in the Diaspora. He also thought it would put his own settlements in Palestine at risk. Remember;  England was the country that kept Jews out for 365 years!!!  Jews were readmitted to England in 1656 by Oliver Cromwell, more than 365 years after they were expelled in 1290 by King Edward I.   We finally entered, had Edmond in the banking business that England liked, and he doesn't know a thing about Husseini.  

               Baron Abraham Edmond Benjamin James de Rothschild (Hebrew: הברון אברהם אדמונד בנימין ג'יימס רוטשילד, romanized: HaBaron Avraham Edmond Binyamin Ya'akov Rotshield; 19 August 1845 – 2 November 1934) was a French member of the Rothschild banking family. A strong supporter of Jewish settlement in Palestine, his large donations lent significant support to the First Aliyah, which helped lead to the establishment of the State of Israel—where he is simply known as "The Baron Rothschild", "HaBaron" (lit. 'The Baron'), or "Hanadiv Hayeduah" (lit. 'The noble donator').  Throughout his life, the Baron invested more than five million pounds in their development; he purchased some 500 square kilometers of land in the Land of Israel and established dozens of moshavot, factories, and wineries.

According to historian Albert M. Hyamson, "Rothschild recognised that the overriding interest of the Jews of Palestine was the confidence and the friendship of their Arab neighbours. The interests of the Arab cultivators of the land he bought were never overlooked, but by development he made this land capable of maintaining a population ten times its former size." While Edmond de Rothschild was not always supportive of an inclusive government—he suggested in 1931 to Judah Magnes that "We must hold them (the Arabs) down with a strong hand"—he acknowledged the importance of co-governance and peaceful coexistence in a 1934 letter to the League of Nations, stating that "the struggle to put an end to the Wandering Jew, could not have as its result, the creation of the Wandering Arab."                                              

       Gold Mall in Rishon LeZion  near Tel Aviv

Although Rothschild remained separate from the Zionist movement, and "rejected institutional and ideological Zionism," The Baron Rothschild became an avid supporter of Jewish settlement in Palestine financing the site at Rishon LeZion.

Herbert Louis Samuel, 1st Viscount Samuel (6 November 1870 – 5 February 1963) was a British Liberal politician who was the party leader from 1931 to 1935.  He was the first nominally-practising Jew to serve as a Cabinet minister and to become the leader of a major British political party. Samuel had promoted Zionism within the British Cabinet, beginning with his 1915 memorandum entitled The Future of Palestine. In 1920 he was appointed as the first High Commissioner for Palestine, in charge of the administration of the territory.

 

He is known for giving Husseini (1893-1974) the title and responsibility as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, (Hajj Mohammed Amin El Husseini) showing he knew nothing about the Arabs, their fears and dreams.  Husseini turns out to be the worst enemy of the Jews.  Samuel also made him the head of the Supreme Muslim Council.  It was he who organized all the public disturbances (riots, fighting) and he was caught and sentenced to exile in 1937.  From there he fled to Lebanon.  During WWII he participated in Rashid Ali's pro-axis coup in Iraq before going to Europe, where he assisted Hitler and was largely responsible for the liquidation of the Jews in the Moslem area of Bosnia.  In 1946 he escaped to Egypt.  After 1948,  actually set up a "Palestinian" government  in Gaza that was later moved to Cairo.  

Resource: 

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_Herzl#:~:text=Beginning%20in%20late%201895%2C%20Herzl,world%20and%20attracted%20international%20attention.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Judenstaat

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmond_James_de_Rothschild

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Samuel,_1st_Viscount_Samuel

https://www.reuters.com/graphics/ISRAEL-PALESTINIANS/GAZA-TUNNELS/gkvldmzorvb/

1947 Palestine And All The People Living There: Life Before Israel's Birth

 Nadene Goldfoot                                              

Last Days of the 30 Year Mandate of the British in Palestine

If you were born in 1947, you are 76 years old.  Most young people have no idea of what was going on in Palestine then.  

For the past 1,877 years, from 70 to 1947 CE, the Land was ruled by foreign governments and never by the people who lived in it. 

In a span of  400 years, from 1516 to 1917, the Land was ruled by the Ottoman Empire by dividing it into separately administered districts called Sanjaks or Vilayets.  The Ottomans had no name for the Land as a whole. 

In the past 29 years, from 1918 to 1947, the Land was ruled by the British who called the Land Palestine which had been called this after the Jewish General "Aluf" Bar Kokhba took back Jerusalem in 132 from the Romans, held it for 3 whole years at the embarrassment of the Romans, then died in 135 in the great battle.  Rome was so mad that they named the Land for the Jews' worst enemy, the Philistines.  

Originally, the 30 year British Mandate over Palestine extended to both sides of the River Jordan.  In 1922, Britain partitioned the Mandated territory into Palestine (west of the Jordan) and Transjordan (east of the Jordan.)  The Land in Hebrew is "Eretz Yisrael".  

                            Arab guerrillas

Hajj Mohammed Amin el-Husseini (1893-1974) in 1921 was a big Arab leader, called the Sherif of Jerusalem and the Grand Mufti, appointed by the British, the only Jew-Sir Herbert Samuel, who also chose Husseini for chairman of the Arab supreme Council.   (Oy gavolt!)  He was afraid of losing his high position if Jews entered the country.  So he organized the Arab riots (nicely called 'the Palestine disturbances by the Brits).  For these, he was sentenced to exile in 1937.  He fled to Lebanon, and during WWII, participated in Rashid Ali's pro-Axis coup in Iraq before going to Europe where he assisted Hitler and was largely responsible for the liquidation of the Jews in the Moslem areas of Bosnia.  In 1946 he escaped to Egypt.  After 1948's Israel birth, he set up a short-lived "Palestine Government " in Gaza-which moved later to Cairo, Egypt.  

During the 2nd half of the 19th century, both communities---Arabs and Jews---began to grow.  By 1914, the population of the Land (west of the Jordan) was estimated at 680,000 of whom 85,000 were Jews.  

In 1917, in order to win Jewish support for Britain's First World War effort, the British Balfour Declaration promised the establishment of a Jewish national home in Ottoman-controlled Palestine.  However, the British had also promised Arab nationalists that a united Arab country, covering most of the Arab Middle East, would result if the Ottoman Turks were defeated.

The United Nations (October 24, 1945)  was an outgrowth of the League of Nations(January 10, 1920) . On 15 November 1920, 41 members states gathered in Geneva for the opening of the first session of the Assembly. This represented a large portion of existing states and corresponded to more than 70% of the world's population. A UN Special committee on Palestine composed for statesmen and jurists from 11 member states, recommended the partitioning of Palestine into independent Jewish and Arab States, linked in an economic union, with Jerusalem under international control.  Both times, the Nations voted for Israel to be created.  

On November 29, 1947, the General Assembly approved this recommendation by more than the required 2/3 majority.  Both the USA and the Soviet Union supported the resolution. 

The decision of the United Nations was accepted by the Jewish Agency.  It was rejected by the Arab Governments and by Palestinian Arab leaders.  

The 6 months until the termination of the British 30 year Mandate were marked by Arab violence against the Jewish community.  The Arabs attacked to interrupt communications between Jewish towns and villages and, above all, to isolate and conquer Jerusalem.  

Prior to the entry of regular Arab armies into the Land in May 1948, not a single Jewish town or village was captured.  

The British authorities aided the Arabs by handing over to them military bases and equipment.  British officers led the Transjordan Arab Legion.  (The Brits were given the 30 year mandate with the command to help the Jews created their Jewish Homeland.)They saw it differently.  They kept Jews out and allowed Arabs in.                   

The main effort of the Jewish Haganah (meaning defense in Hebrew) was to maintain a corridor to Jerusalem and beat back the Arab assaults on the new western city. This was a secret organization kept from the British for Jewish self-defense because the Brits were not doing it.  It grew out of Ha-Shomer in 1920 and existed until 1948. 

Intensive efforts to strengthen the Haganah followed the 1929 Arab riots which resulted in a British policy of appeasement of the Arabs.  In 1931, the Haganah split and the minority, chiefly right-wing groups, formed a separate organization;  these reunited with the Haganah in 1936 but certain elements remained outside and formed the nucleus of the Irgun Tzevai Leumi. 

      Avraham Stern (December 23, 1907-February 12, 1942, born in Suwalki, Poland-or Lithuania where my Bubba was born. When 18 in 1925, he migrated alone to Palestine. He died at 35.    

Avraham Stern (1907-1942) left the Irgun in 1939-1940 of which he had been a leader, because of its refusal to continue anti-British activities in Palestine during World War II.  He formed an underground organization later known as Lohame Herut Israel.  The British called it the Stern Gang. My 3rd cousin, Stanley Goldfoot, was the Chief of Intelligence for it.  They carried out acts of sabotage, etc. Stanley was a writer; wrote "A Letter to the World." Stern was killed by the British police while being arrested. 

Stern spent the rest of the 1930s traveling back and forth to Eastern Europe to organize revolutionary cells in Poland and promote immigration of Jews to Palestine in defiance of British restrictions (this was therefore known as "illegal immigration").

Stern developed a plan to train 40,000 young Jews to sail for Palestine and take over the country from the British colonial authorities. He succeeded in enlisting the Polish government in this effort. The Poles began training Irgun members and arms were set aside, but then Germany invaded Poland and began the Second World War in 1939. This ended the training, and immigration routes were cut off. Stern was in Palestine at the time and was arrested the same night the war began. He was incarcerated together with the entire High Command of the Irgun in the Jerusalem Central Prison and Sarafand Detention Camp.  

The Haganah wasn't idle;  and was strengthened during the 1936-1939 disturbances by the establishment of the Supernumerary Police Force which number 20,000 in 1939.  This force was recruited by the Haganah command and operated as far as possible under its instructions.  

Major General Charles Orde Windgate In September 1936, Wingate was assigned to a staff officer position in the British Mandate of Palestine, and became an intelligence officer. From his arrival he saw the creation of a Jewish State in Palestine as being a religious duty, and immediately put himself into absolute alliance with Jewish political leaders. Palestinian Arab guerrillas had at the time of his arrival begun a campaign of attacks against both British mandate officials and Jewish communities.  Too bad Britain didn't have his outlook.  

 Yitzhak Sadeh (Hebrew: יצחק שדה, born Izaak Landoberg, August 10, 1890 – August 20, 1952), was the commander of the Palmach and one of the founders of the Israel Defense Forces at the time of the establishment of the State of Israel.

At this period, the "special Field companies" were raised by Yitzhak Sadeh and the "Night Squads" established by Charles Orde Wingate (1903-1944). Wingate was a British soldier.  While serving during 1936-1939 in Palestine, he organized formations of Jewish volunteers, known as the Special Night Squads, to defeat Arab terrorist activity.  A keen bible student, Windgate remained an ardent supporter of Zionism to the end of his brilliant military career.  Sadeh (1890-1952) assisted Trumpeldor in founding the Russian He-Halutz movement in 1919 and the following year settled in Palestine.  He became an Israeli labor and military leader. I taught with one of his descendants-a teacher of English in Safed in 1981.

 Joseph Trumpeldor (1880-1920) was going to be a dentist, but volunteered for the Russian army and lost an arm during the fighting in 1904-1905 while a Japanese captive.  He was made an officer and settled in Palestine in 1912.  During WWI he was in Egypt working with Jabotinsky for the establishment of a Jewish unit to fight with the British against the Turks in Palestine.  He helped raise the Zion Mule Corps but this was dispatched to the Gallipoli.  As an ex-Russian officer, Trumpeldor was excluded from the Jewish Legion.  In 1917, he went to Russia to organize Jewish settlement groups for Palestine and from his activity the He-Halutz movement emerged.  In 1919, he returned to Palestine as leader of a pioneer group and unsuccessfully tried to reconcile the antagonisms between the various workers' political parties inside the country.  He organized volunteers to protect exposed Jewish settlements in Upper Galilee and was killed in defense of Tel Hai. 

      Haganah 1942  

The Haganah also executed settlement operations  (Stockade and Tower), organized "illegal" immigration, and even set up its own secret plant for manufacturing equipment. 

The ship, St. Louis, was refused landing in USA in 1939.  The more than 900 passengers of the M.S. St. Louis were denied entry by immigration authorities in multiple countries in the lead-up to the Holocaust.  As the M.S. St. Louis cruised off the coast of Miami in June 1939, its passengers could see the lights of the city glimmering. But the United States hadn’t been on the ship’s original itinerary, and its passengers didn’t have permission to disembark in Florida. As the more than 900 Jewish passengers looked longingly at the twinkling lights, they hoped against hope that they could land.

Most of the ship’s 937 passengers were Jews trying to escape Nazi Germany. Though World War II had not yet begun in the USA, the groundwork for the Holocaust was already being laid in Germany, where Jewish people faced harassment, discrimination and political persecution. But though the danger faced by the passengers was clear, they were turned down by immigration authorities, first by Cuba, then the United States and Canada. For many on the St. Louis, that rejection was a death sentence.

The world’s refusal of the St. Louis’ desperate refugees was a death sentence for 254 refugees—approximately half of the number who had returned to the European continent in 1939. Many who did not die were interned in concentration camps, like Max Korman, who built on lessons learned on the ship to help organize inmates of the Westerbork concentration camp in the Netherlands.

      Haganah 1946-1947:  The ship, Exodus 1947 was formerly the "President Warfield" which carried 4,554 Jewish refugees to Palestine under Haganah auspices.  It was seized by the British in the Mediterranean after a battle in which 3 Jews were killed in July 1947.  The refugees, returned forcibly from Haifa to Port de Bouc, France, refused to land there;  in spite of their resistance they were disembarked at Hamburg, Germany by British soldiers.  The incident did much to swing world opinion against Britain's Palestine policy. 

In 10 months, Israel was born-May 14, 1948.  They died short of 10 months more and then they would have been in Israel.                                                     

      Haganah 1947 

In these conditions, Britain withdrew its last forces from Palestine on May 15, 1948. This ended the spell of more than 1,800 years during which the Land had been governed by aliens.  

1947 was the last year under such dictatorship.   

   Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/film/british-soldiers-deport-exodus-1947-passengers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yitzhak_Sadeh

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orde_Wingate

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palestine_(region)

https://www.history.com/news/wwii-jewish-refugee-ship-st-louis-1939

https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/conflict-Palestine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avraham_Stern

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Trumpeldor